


Shades of Who I Used to Be (Stay a While and Maybe You'll See)

by sixbeforelunch



Series: Shades of Who I Used to Be [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-16
Updated: 2007-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:16:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixbeforelunch/pseuds/sixbeforelunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a conversation Jonas wants to have, but there's no one else around to have it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shades of Who I Used to Be (Stay a While and Maybe You'll See)

Jonas couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned. He recited the planetary designation of every planet he'd ever been to in chronological order. He checked the forecast for Tulsa (partly sunny with a high in the mid to low 50s). He reviewed the known Goa'uld dialects and their tense structures.

Finally, he gave up and got dressed, thinking he could go for a walk around the base, or maybe hit the gym. (Hit the gym. It sounded like a strange phrasing to his mind, but he'd been trying to incorporate Tau'ri colloquialisms into his speech.) He'd been working out with Teal'c lately, trying to get into better shape. Colonel O'Neill had finally started warming up to him, he was hoping that honing his physical skills might give the Colonel more confidence in his abilities.

Of course, now that Doctor Jackson was back...

No. Better not to think about that.

He ended up, not surprisingly, walking toward his office. Over a year at the SGC had turned him into what Colonel O'Neill called a workaholic. Not that he hadn't been very focused on his work on Kelowna, but on his home planet he hadn't actually slept where he worked. And on Kelowna he'd had friends who made it a point to pull him away from his job. He had friends on Earth too, but Major Carter was just as devoted to her work as Jonas was to his own. Jonas was actually closer to Teal'c than anyone else on Earth, but they still weren't...what had he heard it called? Drinking buddies? Well, okay, there was that one time in Oregon, but that was pretty much it.

It was always strange to think of Kelowna. He missed it, sometimes more now than he had in the days and weeks immediately after his self-imposed exile. At the same time, he wasn't sure he would go back, given the chance. Being at the SGC had given him the opportunity to see more than he ever would have on Kelowna.

He turned the corner into his office, thinking he could at least finish the translation that Colonel Reynolds had been asking about for days, only to stop in his tracks when he saw Doctor Jackson sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, a book open in his lap. He looked up when Jonas walked in.

"Sorry," Doctor Jackson said. "I didn't mean to intrude."

"No, no," Jonas said. "It's...it's your office."

"Yeah. So they keep telling me."

Jonas tried to imaging having your entire life erased, and being surrounded by people who kept telling you about who you were supposed to be, but having no way to know if they were telling the truth or not. He couldn't.

"Doctor Jackson--"

"Daniel, please. Or Arrom would be fine." He paused and considered. "Easier for me, actually, but probably not the best idea. If I am going to get my life back, I'm going to have to get used to my own name, right?"

"Right," Jonas said, even though he wasn't sure Doctor Jackson was asking a question that he wanted answered.

"But 'Doctor Jackson' sounds so formal. Names have a large bearing on how people approach each other. A formal title sets up a barrier to communication sometimes, creates a hierarchy that isn't always..." He trailed off and looked sheepishly up at Jonas. "Sorry. Ideas come to me sometimes. I'm still learning what to keep in my head and what to say out loud. Jim--I mean Jack--he says I never had that skill, but apparently I'm rambling more than usual. At least according to, uh, Sam. Anyway. Daniel is fine."

"Daniel," Jonas said. "Okay."

Doctor--Daniel closed the book. "I'm in your way. I should go."

"No. I was...I was off duty eight hours ago. I just couldn't sleep. But, please, if you want to look around here, I should be the one to go. It..."

"My office?"

"Yeah," Jonas finished dumbly, even as a part of him didn't want to admit it. He'd grown to like this office, actually.

Daniel stood up and put the book back on the shelf. It was in Latin, Jonas noticed.

"Can you read that?" he asked.

Daniel nodded. "Apparently all of the languages stayed intact. That's a good thing, I guess. I wouldn't be very useful around here without them." He sighed. "That was when I finally believed them. When, uh, Jack showed me my office and I could read everything in here. I knew they were actually telling the truth about who I am."

"I'm sorry," Jonas said, because what else did you say to someone who had lost their entire life?

Doctor Jackson shrugged. "I'm alive. To hear Jack tell it, I shouldn't be. I can't complain about that."

Jonas shook his head. "Still. It must be hard."

"Very," Doctor Jackson said softly. He trailed his fingers over the books, brushing the titles on the spines as though he could absorb the words in them through touch alone. "It's strange, I have all of this knowledge, but no context. I could recite large passages of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, if I wanted to, but I can't tell you how I was introduced to it. I can speak Greek, but I don't remember learning it. It's..." He glanced at Jonas. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be laying this on you."

Jonas shook his head. "It's okay."

Daniel let his hand fall. "No one seems to want to hear this. The others--Jack and Sam and...Teal'c--they'll listen, but I can tell it's hard for them. They always look like they're about to cry. Well, Sam and Teal'c do. Jack looks like he wants to hit something."

"Colonel O'Neill looks like that a lot," Jonas said.

Doctor Jackson nodded absently at this new piece of information, but didn't comment on it. "Everyone else seems to be avoiding me."

Jonas winced. On Daniel's first day back, Doctor Newman had more or less tackled him in the hall way and cried all over his shirt. Daniel had reacted badly. Jonas didn't have the whole story, but it had apparently triggered a panic attack, and possibly some flashbacks, and Daniel may or may not have locked himself in a bathroom stall for an hour (details were fuzzy and Jonas didn't think it was his place to pry). After that, SG1 had made it very clear that Daniel Jackson was to be left alone on pain of whatever Colonel O'Neill could come up with as punishment (and Colonel O'Neill could be very creative when he was motivated).

"They're trying to give you space," Jonas said. "Everyone realizes that this can't be easy."

"I just wish they'd stop--" He closed his mouth and crossed his arms over his chest, turning away slightly.

Jonas chewed the inside of his cheek, thinking that he really was not the person that needed to be in this office. Colonel O'Neill, or Sam or Teal'c or all of them should be standing here instead. Someone who'd known Daniel for years and understood him should be having this conversation. It shouldn't be Jonas, who had met him only a few times, and built an image of the man based on journal entries, mission reports, and the well-meant, but naturally biased, descriptions of Doctor Jackson's friends and colleagues.

Then again, the sad irony of the situation was that right now Jonas knew more about Daniel's life than Daniel himself did. Jonas had read the man's journals. Not just his anthropological and linguistic notes, but personal entries. Colonel O'Neill had sorted through the journals before turning them over to Jonas and taken out the strictly private ones, but Daniel had a habit of putting personal details into all of his journals. Reading a dead man's diary was learning about history. Having read the diary of the man standing in front of you was something else entirely.

Ultimately, it was Jonas standing here right now, and something told him that Daniel needed to have this conversation right now. He didn't need to have it tomorrow when Colonel O'Neill was on the base, or fifteen minutes from now when Jonas had gone to get Teal'c. Maybe he didn't even want to have it with one of them.

"Stop what?" Jonas asked.

"How did I die?" Daniel asked and Jonas felt his stomach clench up because this was the last thing he wanted to talk about.

"You died a hero," Jonas sad. "You saved my country, maybe my entire planet."

Daniel shook his head. "See. I wish you'd all stop doing that."

Jonas frowned. "I don't--"

"I don't want to hear about what a wonderful person I am. I'm tired of people looking at me like I'm about to--to--I don't know! Pull a rabbit out of a hat, or something." He yanked his glasses off and scrubbed at his face, silent for a long time. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "I think I'm just tired."

"It's okay," Jonas said, even though it wasn't. Doctor Jackson has lost his entire life and it was coming back to him in pieces, more slowly than anyone liked. Most people were avoiding him in an attempt to keep him from feeling overwhelmed. SG1 was trying to connect, but of course Daniel could sense how much this upset them. The man was nothing if not perceptive. And everyone was waiting for him to become the brilliant person they remembered and take up where he left off. It had to be disconcerting. It had to be isolating.

Daniel sighed. "I should just go."

"You died of radiation poisoning," Jonas said. "Well, I guess you didn't really die exactly, but...that's what you were dying from."

"Radiation poisoning," Daniel said. He closed his eyes and something about the way he grimaced made Jonas flinch in sympathy.

"They didn't tell you?"

"I never asked before," Daniel said. His voice was barely above a whisper.

Jonas looked away, feeling completely out of his depth and hoping he hadn't just made things worse somehow. He'd thought highly of Doctor Jackson before, and was genuinely starting to like him. The last thing he wanted to do was trigger what had to be an awful memory.

Daniel--no, Doctor Jackson; somehow Jonas couldn't think of him as Daniel just yet, it felt disrespectful no matter what Doctor Jackson thought of formal titles creating barriers to communication. Doctor Jackson shook his head. With the gesture, he seemed to force himself out of wherever his mind had taken him. “I knew it was bad. Radiation poisoning? That's...that's bad, right? What am I saying? Of course it's bad."

Jonas nodded, slightly, wondering what Doctor Jackson remembered about the effects of radiation poisoning and what he didn't and not wanting to ask. It was selfish to think it, but Jonas did not want to be around when the full force of the memory came back. _If_ it came back. Maybe that was one memory he was better off without.

"They all get this look whenever I mention my death...or ascension or whatever," Doctor Jackson continued. "I've been having nightmares, but I didn't want to--" The way Doctor Jackson had his arms crossed, Jonas could see his hand gripping his upper arm. His knuckles were white. "Thank you. That--knowing that helps, I think."

Jonas nodded. "Okay."

"I'm going to go lay down," Doctor Jackson said, walking past him.

"Doctor Jackson?"

Doctor Jackson stopped at the door and looked at him.

Jonas paused, trying to decide how to phrase what he needed to say. "Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c and Sam...Doctor Frasier...They might be uncomfortable with talking about what's happened, but they'd feel a lot worse knowing that you needed to talk and were avoiding it to spare their feelings."

Doctor Jackson's expression was indecipherable, but he nodded. "Sure. But I'd rather they didn't--"

Jonas held up his hand. "I won't tell anyone about this."

"Thank you," Doctor Jackson said and walked away.

Jonas leaned against the work bench, suddenly exhausted. He didn't bother going back to his quarters, though. He doubted he'd be able to sleep tonight.

Anyway, the translation that Colonel Reynolds needed was still waiting. With that, at least, he knew what he was doing.

end


End file.
